It’s Wednesday, May 20. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Jed Rubenfeld on the president’s IRS self-dealing, and why a court might not be able to stop him. Joe Nocera has a new podcast about the crime that gripped America like no other. Olivia Reingold on the Luigi Mangione fangirls who have NYC press credentials. Plus: a literary controversy for our time. And much more.
But first: One party, under Trump, indivisible.
The biggest primaries on Tuesday took place in Georgia and Kentucky, and on the Republican side, President Donald Trump triumphed in every single one.
Some victories were subtle. In the Kentucky Senate primary, Rep. Andy Barr defeated Daniel Cameron—a one-time protégé of Senator Mitch McConnell, who has become one of Trump’s staunchest critics within the GOP.
In Georgia, the top two finishers who qualified for the runoff in the governor’s race are a pair of MAGA Republicans, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones and businessman Rick Jackson. Far behind in the vote tally was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who challenged Trump’s voter-fraud claims after the 2020 election.
Trump’s biggest victory came in the headliner race of the night, between Rep. Thomas Massie and Trump’s handpicked challenger, Ed Gallrein. Massie broke with the president in an explosive way over the past year, tying him to the Epstein files, voting to halt the war in Iran, and accusing him of being an Israeli stooge.
Massie lost by about 10 points Tuesday night, but as Seth Mandel notes, his movement may live on. There is a rising faction on the right that abhors foreign wars and believes Israeli conspiracies control U.S. policy. For now, GOP voters prefer Trump to that faction by a long shot. But who will fill the vacuum once the president is gone?
—Mene Ukueberuwa
On Monday morning, two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people. After the attack, they shot themselves. The attackers left behind a hate-filled manifesto and one of their guns had the words “race war now” scrawled on the side. According to the FBI, the shooters had “a broad hatred toward a lot of folks.” To make sense of this latest act of politically motivated violence, we turned to Rabbi David Ingber.
The Trump administration just settled a lawsuit with his own Internal Revenue Service in which the president was essentially both the plaintiff and the defendant. Part of that settlement includes a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for people the administration deems victims of political persecution. The whole arrangement reeks of corrupt self-dealing, argues Jed Rubenfeld, with the IRS agreeing to drop all current and potential claims against Trump. But can the courts block it?
A short story about a weary Trinidadian farmer just won one of the most competitive literary awards in the English-speaking world. The only problem? Days after the prize was announced, readers raised the alarm that it bears all the hallmarks of being AI-generated. Did a machine just fool a panel of literary judges? Novi Zhukovsky reports on the burgeoning scandal.
Outside a Manhattan courthouse this week, three women with city-issued press credentials cheered on Luigi Mangione and made comments like “fuck Brian Thompson,” the healthcare CEO Mangione allegedly murdered. They call themselves the Mangionistas—one is a Fulbright scholar turned sex video game creator, and the other is a “Hot Girls for Zohran” influencer. Who are they? And why on earth did New York City give them press credentials? Read Olivia Reingold’s latest report for all the details.
Our Latest Podcast: The Lindbergh Conspiracies
On the night of March 1, 1932, someone climbed a ladder to a window of a remote New Jersey estate and stole the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, the famed American aviator. The baby was later found dead, and a man was arrested, tried, and executed—case closed. Or was it? Ninety-four years later, many of the details still don’t add up. Free Press journalists Joe Nocera and Poppy Damon became obsessed with getting to the bottom of it—and we think you will too. Listen to The Lindbergh Conspiracies, a new podcast from The Free Press hosted by Joe Nocera.
Listen to episode one below, and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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THE NEWS
Thirty-year Treasury yields have hit their highest level in 19 years amid persistent inflation fears related to the Iran war. The rising rates are pushing up the costs of borrowing for homeowners and businesses.
Maureen Galindo, a candidate in the Democratic primary runoff for a Texas House seat, said in an Instagram post that she would turn an ICE detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She added: “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Texas Democrats have denounced Galindo’s comments.
Google is changing its search box for the first time in 30 years. In place of the skinny rectangle will be a larger box to encourage longer questions for Gemini, Google’s AI. Users will see more AI answers in their results and fewer links to sites.
The Long Island Rail Road strike ended after unions representing its workers reached a deal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Monday. The deal includes a 4.5 percent salary increase and “delivers raises for workers while protecting riders and taxpayers,” Governor Kathy Hochul said.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to suggest it didn’t have the authority to review the Pentagon’s decision to designate Anthropic as a national security risk, but it could review specific orders banning the government from using certain companies’ products. The hearing comes after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth designated the AI company a supply chain risk after Anthropic refused to remove contractual restrictions on use of its software for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
President Trump endorsed Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in his primary challenge to Senator John Cornyn yesterday. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The two candidates will face off in a runoff next week, and early voting has already begun.
President Trump said he “was an hour away” from resuming bombing Iran yesterday, but Iranian leaders were eager to make a deal. The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee said Trump’s hesitation was because he knew “any move against Iran means facing a decisive military response.”
Claude, the AI without ads
Anthropic keeps conversations with Claude ad-free: no sponsored links, no advertisers shaping answers, no paid product placements you didn’t ask for.
Google fixing its search engine to point away from websites and toward AI - theirs, I assume, no one else's - is generating plenty of attention from regulatory authorities, and for good reason. Boy oh boy, waytago to make users stupider and more prone to mis/disinformation.
No, it was the electorate that did Massie in, and they may live to regret doing so.